Judging Freedom - COL. Lawrence Wilkerson The Rules-Based Order Was a Lie

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson  The Rules-Based Order Was a LieSee 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. Pragically, 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 Thursday, January 22nd, 2006. My dear friend, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, joins us now. Colonel Larry, always a pleasure. Thank you for accommodating my schedule.

Was there ever an international rule-based order, or was it a facade or something in between? Yes, there was. Very distinctly so. There were imperfections. There were even evils

contained within that order. But generally speaking, the thrust of the global community was to deal with evils and even of Washington and to eliminate them, particularly in Washington's case if they didn't like them, like, for example, Charles Taylor in Africa, when we were all for him going to the international criminal court and getting maximum punishment. But those things were dealable with. They were expected of a great power, and I think it was a fairly reasonably, fair world, economically, trade-wise, security-wise. Well, what is the time frame we're talking about, post-World War II to? I'd say through H.W. Bush's administration.

And this concept of international rules emanated by customs and treaties. Is that a fair thing to say? Absolutely. Treaties with the force of law. as you're apt to point out, the same court in our constitution, two-thirds vote, ratified by the Senate, as force of law. And it's more than the force of law. It has the force of the Constitution.

Right. As you know, it is elevated to the supreme law of the land. What happens when a president, because he doesn't want to or doesn't understand a treaty, just disregards it? it's an impeachable offense. Believe it or not, we actually talked about that when Powell was continuing from his time with H.W. Bush, when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with George W. Bush in trying to raise to the elevation of passage a couple of treaties that definitely needed passing. One of the most foremost was the law of the sea treaty.

The only people in the world against that were multinational oil companies and some engineering firms. But it has benefits galore in it, and we are reaping the benefits 90% of them all the time. But we didn't want to ratify the treaty because those people have such incredible lobby power. But Powell couldn't even get a president to think about bringing a treaty up. And that tells you what began to happen to this order. We haven't ratified a treaty in so long. I don't remember when the last one was. We have clearly ratified the UN Charter.

We have clearly ratified the Geneva Conventions, the Treaty Against Torture. In fact, we wrote all of those treaties. When I say we, the United States of America, its State Department, military and intelligence officials took the lead, starting with Harry Truman and the UN Charter drafted in the FDR years, but finalized when Truman was in the White House. So something different. William Howard Taft the fourth, Powell's lawyer pointed out President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney on more than one occasion.

Pointed what out? That we were architects of insignatories to the Convention on Torture. Right, right. They went right ahead and tortured. They went right ahead and tortured. and as far as we know, there was no consequences to them. I say as far as we know, because we don't know where Dick Cheney is now. I do.

With 99% confidence, I know where he is. And we don't know where George W. is going to end up, but we do know they're brutalized and tortured people. Even people that the torturers eventually revealed were torturing the wrong person. This person knows nothing. A perfect world. President Obama would have started some sort of proceedings not only with regard to torture, but also, in my view, with regard to the Patriot Act and how we were executing it.

He didn't. He even said, I don't want to create the kind of situation that would hurt me, so I was going to look ahead, not backward. What was your reaction when President Trump said, I have no use for international law? nothing restraints me on the international stage. I'm paraphrasing, except now I'm quoting, my own mind and quote, my own morality. What struck me is that my lessons from history, which are quite extravagant in many respects, say that that will come back to haunt us, not Donald Trump, but it will come back to haunt us.

How will it come back to haunt us? when we are the victims of another state actor thumbing his or her nose at these international treaties, which they've all signed. I mean, there's a few that haven't been signed by North Korea, but everything else has been signed. It despise how much North Korea has signed as opposed to some other desultory character.

Well, the Treaty of Rome, which establishes the International Criminal Court, was not signed by Russia, North Korea, China, Iran, and the U.S. Right. What company we're in. But my point is, what recourse is there when a president thumbs his nose at a treaty? Ultimately, the recourse is the rest of the world

and what they do about it. If they don't do anything about it, because it's not consequential to them at the time, or even in the future, then, there's nothing to be done really. But if it is consequential, you can bet, and that's what I meant by payback as a mother, you will pay back as your power recedes

and other powers, power increases. And that's what's happening right. You see the poll from Carnegie? Christopher Shiv is the lead on it. 62% of Americans believe that China is as powerful or more powerful. than the United States. The Americans are smarter than the government. Did, was it foreign policy of the United States

to kill civilians in the streets of Iran in the past two weeks orchestrated by the American Central Intelligence Agency and its colleagues in Mossad and MI6 and I gather French intelligence as well? Mossad was the lead, I think, but I have little doubt that the others you named were there and perhaps even some more. For example, we rarely do anything like that in that region without a Jordanian or two around. So I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't some Jordanians there also. If you remember the incident with the Al-Qaeda that turned into a real fiasco for the CIA,

it was a Jordanian blessed agent that did all that. back to the involvement of the United States government, surely they knew people would die, they gave away rifles. Yes. And the whole purpose of this was to foment so much violence that the Ayatollahs would be thrown out, just like they did to President Muhammad Mossadegh in 1953. It was a vivid reminder of that.

I made some study of both attempts by Kermit Roosevelt, the successful in the second. one to overthrow Mosaddek. And one of the things that stands out in that is that when the killing became really too much for Mossadegh, who was not a kind of man who went around killing people, he simply wasn't. He was more like Cyrus the Great, if you will. He wanted to accommodate people. He wanted democracy, is what he wanted. He had to act in an undemocratic way in order to nationalize the oil, but that was something that just had to be done. The British had made it such an untenable situation. It just had to be done.

So when he was pressed and saw so many Iranians, fellow Iranians dying, he gave up. I'm going to play a clip from the secretary of the Treasury, put aside his attitude in this, but he acknowledges that it was the intent and purpose of the United States government to make life so miserable for the Iranians, even if people died, that they would riot in the streets. Here he is with my former colleague Maria Barteromo of the Fox Business Network, Chris No. 14. What do you want to say about sanctions, something else you've been working on, of course? What are you planning there in terms of Iran and the impact there?

Do sanctions actually work? And the same question with regard to 500% secondary sanctions or tariffs on countries who purchase energy products from Russia? Okay, so two things there. There are Treasury sanctions. And if you look at a speech that I gave at the Economic Club of New York last March, I said that I believe the Iranian currency was on the verge of collapse, that if I were an Iranian citizen, I would take my money out. President Trump ordered Treasury and our OFAC division, Office of Foreign Asset Control, to put maximum pressure on Iran, and it's worked.

Because in December, their economy collapsed. We saw a major bank go under. The central bank has started to print money. There is a dollar shortage. They are not able to get imports. And this is why the people took to the street. So this is economic statecraft. No shots fired.

and things are moving in a very positive way here. Colonel, I find this repellent about your thoughts, please. I do too. Economic statecraft, Mr. Secretary? I would call it war crimes. You are using the power of your economy and your system to kill people. Do you recall when Madeline Albright was asked a question? I think she was out of the secretariat, but not by law.

Did she know that half a million Iraqi children died during our sanctions period after the first war? And she said, yeah, I know that. I think it was worth it. I think that was a reprehensible statement, just like I think Scott Besson is a reprehensible individual. He's Steve Miller with a dollar signed on his forehead. Are Israel and Iran still planning, are Israel and the U.S. still planning to attack Iran, Colonel? Absolutely. In my view, I don't think anything's put it off except Bebe.

I think he's been genuinely honest here where he doesn't know how big a hole he has in his protective dome. And until he knows how big that hole is and what it might do to him, and if he can repair it, he's uneasy unless he has the absolute assurance of Donald Trump in joining him in the conflict. And I don't mean just joining him in the aftermath, as they did with the B-2s against the nuclear program. I mean joining in an assault on Iran that is around the clock. Here's Peter Orszag, who was either chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors or Secretary of Treasury under, in one of the Obama terms, now the head of Lazard Private Bank.

telling Andrew Ross Sorkin and another person that we can't see in the interview from the New York Times that his sources are telling him the attack on Iran is imminent. I don't know how he would know this other than maybe he still has friends in the government. He's certainly big in APEC. He's a major Zionist. But before I criticize him, I think it's 19, Chris. I think it's very likely that over the next few days there will be something that happens in Iran. You do?

It would be something big, yes. Why do you think that? I did, well, from a variety of different, you know, indirect information. And also, to your point, I think it's entirely possible the United States was waiting for the carriers to arrive. Was waiting for them, I'm sorry. For the carriers to arrive. And that this is just, so the Greenland story is just a head fake to? I don't know about a head fake, but it has the effect of, it has that effect, even if that's not the intent.

And that would mean what? How does that play out if that's actually the case? Then the big question becomes, can you actually do regime change through effectively a bombing campaign? And I don't think we have any history in which that's effective. But we'll see. It depends what the objective of what happens is if it's to take out the ballistic missiles, that can be successful. If it's regime change, you know, that's got a more checkered history. Now, tell me about it.

Think about Gaddafi. We had regime change there, but it wasn't the bombs that did it. It was the nasty way we delivered the bombs and caused the crisis in the ground situation, and they murdered him. And look at Libya today. Really, really good results. Yeah, Libya is a mess today. It used to be the garden spot of Africa. It's now reprehensible.

But I don't know. Is he a friend of Beebe's? Does he know what's going on? He seemed to resist a little bit when they tried to press. him about his sources. This was at Davos, so, you know, all the ruling elites were there. I don't know, Megseth was there, but Rubio and the others were. Bibi wouldn't show up for anything significant, but he was there. Bibi might be arrested if he was in Switzerland. I don't know.

You know, we have Lincoln and the North Arabian Sea, or very shortly we will have with her escorts. We have a carrier, as I understand it, either headed for or in already the Eastern Med, but I want to see where that third carrier is, because, Judge, you cannot conduct around the clock carrier air operations without three carriers. You can do about 72 hours with two, you can do 24 hours with one. And we're talking about here, you better be prepared to do 14 to 20 days of around the clock. You better be prepared to do what Bill Clinton did to Serbia, 78 straight days of bombing. And even then, as you will remember from that situation, there's no guarantee anybody's going

to cave. In fact, there's every historical guarantee they're going to get matter and matter and more unified and they're going to destroy Israel. And maybe some of our facilities too. Does Trump seem, well, he does. Trump seems to feel, because he said this in Davos and before he left, It would be like Venezuela, a quick in and out. But what is the, to be accomplished during the end?

Are they going to kidnap the 85-year-old Ayatollah? That's a good question. Are they thinking that they could pull something like that off, like what they pulled off in Venezuela, but in Tehran or somewhere close by? I don't know, but I wouldn't bet twice on the same kind of luck. And a lot of Venezuela was luck. I don't care what Egg Seth says or anybody else.

A lot of it was luck. It was exquisite timing. Anytime you have exquisite timing, you have a potential failure. And it was dependence on a lot of things that just happened to fall our way. Like, for example, Maduro getting past that lock. You know, you can say it was exquisitely done, well done, and I'd agree with you. But I would not try to repeat it. And I certainly wouldn't try to repeat it in Tehran.

We tried that with Jimmy Carter, you may recall. Now, the military, in that respect, special ops, is much better today. But we left some dead people in the desert and a burning helicopter and burning C-130. And Iran is not Venezuela. And you got a much more difficult situation. I'm not saying it couldn't be done. But I'm saying it would be really dangerous to expect the same kind of exquisite precision that you had, apparently in Venezuela again in Tehran.

What did Trump accomplish on Davos? Making a fool of himself, really. I mean, Borowitz from Borowitz to serious commentators, they thought he ought to be in an insane asylum. They thought if Denmark could offer him a home in a psychiatric facility, they should do so. I mean, and yet at the same time, You've got the press writing about how impressed these various business people were,

because what Trump is saying is what I've been saying is that he's going to continue the chaos. And these people who say the globalists don't want chaos. Well, they're not talking about the globalists I know. They want steady, predictable happenings. That's hogwash with regard to many of them. And many of them that that's hogwash for are in the curtains behind Trump. And there are people like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Charles Koch, Robert Mercer, Ron Lauder. I could go on and on and on until I out of breath.

Right. Chris, take the keys from Grandpa and then Governor Newsom back to back. Watch this, Colonel. Congressman, real quick, is Donald Trump's mental health concern for you after some of the things that he's been saying in Europe? Well, he said a lot of crazy shit today at Davos. I mean, I think it's time to take the keys away from Grandkids. I mean, he doesn't seem like he's all there. I'm not naive about what I've said this morning and how that will be reflected in the official White House account.

I'm not naive about the fact that he threatened to prosecute the Fed chief in the United States of America, who's literally going after his enemies with the FBI and the DOJ and these power ministries. I'm not naive about any of this. I'm not naive about the corruption and the graft at scale we've never seen in American history. American history. I'm not naive about folks writing billion-dollar checks to Wickcoff, to Jared Kushner for this new peace deal they're announcing today. I'm not naive about the fact that President of the United States made a billion and a half plus dollars in the last 12 months, personally. How the hell are we putting up with this?

Excellent question. Excellent question. I don't particularly care for him, but that's an excellent question. Did Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkoff, the president's son-in-law and business buddy, his real estate agent negotiators, each get a billion dollars over the Gaza peace deal? That's the way I understand it. I understand that that billion dollars from each of the members of the group is going to go into a private fund that has DJT stamped on it. Who would take seriously the concept of a board of peace? This is not ratified by the Senate. This won't exist unless he's succeeded by someone who agrees with him after he leaves the White House. It has no legal authority.

I think his expectation is, and I don't necessarily disagree with the thrust of this, but I certainly disagree with the mechanism and method. He expects it to be a replacement for the United Nations. And we need a replacement for the United Nations. We need either massive reform, and I could almost stand here for an hour and tell you all the things that Tom Pickering and others told me ought to be done in order to reform it, or a new organization because it's feckless. And Gutierrez has presided over its ultimate fecklessness, blessing this horrible situation, which is a colonial attempt to take over a people to eradicate a people with the UN Security Council resolution. That's despicable. You know, Kofi Annan is rolling in his grave, viciously rolling in his grave. This is crazy. Here's of all people, Russian President, Vladimir Putin, defending the legitimate needs of the Palestinian people, Chris.

Number 17. In the Middle East and about the search for possible solutions. Addressing the urgent problems of the Palestinian people and resolved. the most acute humanitarian issues in the Gaza Strip. In this regard, I would like to highlight the main point. The main point is that the entire process should have a positive impact on the long-term settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict based on the relevant United Nations resolutions, and that the necessary, the inalienable needs and wishes of the Palestinians must be taken into account.

This concerns the recommendation to reconstruct the Gaza Strip and its basic social infrastructure, health care systems, water supply, and to establish uninterrupted food provision. Therefore, even now, before we have made a decision regarding participation as part of, and in the work of the Peace Council itself, given Russia's special relationship with the Palestinian people, we could, I think, allocate one billion U.S. dollars from Russian assets that were frozen under the previous U.S. administration to the Peace Council. Now, what he said is not accepted by Khrner, not accepted by Whitkoff, not accepted by Trump, clearly not accepted by Netanyahu or the Israeli government.

Putin's a lawyer, you know, and he's somewhat of a historian, too. I think we should thank our lucky stars that he's tied up in Ukraine right now, because I don't believe he would be taking the kind of hands-off position vocally, not so much, but certainly realistically that he's taking right now with regard to the Levant and particularly with regard to Gaza, we would probably have a first order problem on our hands if Putin were free to do something about what's happening in Gaza. Well, Colonel, should the immigration services be able to break down people's doors and enter their homes without arrest and search warrants as they now claim. they can do. It's a direct extension of what we started, Judge. We told those border agents, and we told, I'm not even sure that the Attorney General, David Addington, and all those

jokers around the vice president, I'm not even sure they knew what they were doing when they said 100 nautical miles from the Mexican border, you can go in order to enforce the Customs and Border Patrol, for example. What they were enforcing was not probably, cause searches, not even reasonable suspicion searches. What they were extending was the ability of a customs and border patrol agent to look at you and say, give me your computer. Give it to me now. If you don't give it to me, I will incarcerate you for 24 hours while I steal it from you, essentially, and look at it. And oh, by the way, since I can't look very deeply at the border, if I have a reasonable suspicion now, the law finally comes in and enters, I will take it and ship it to the Colorado lab, and you won't see it for 30 to 45 days because we'll go over that thing with a fine tooth comb.

Businessman or tramp, didn't matter. That's what we did. We found so many terrorists. It was incredible. We didn't find a single one, but we found a lot of child pornography, and we found a lot of drug material. But it was all done without any real reason in the law to do it. So this is a police state. Yeah, that started it.

And we've just reinforced and reinforced. And now Trump is taking it to the ultimate. He's taking it to the Hitlerian level. Chris, do you have the clip of the doctor revealing that Rachel Good had a pulse? eight minutes after she was shot, and this doctor was prevented from attending to her at the scene. This morning I learned for the first time through an NPR story that Rene Good still had a pulse eight minutes after she was shot by an ICE agent. And yet, the offer to administer aid from a physician on the scene following his Hippocratic oath was denied. I can't say how much that stirs the blood of everyone behind me here as we try to fulfill our obligation, our oath and our duty to care for the people of Minnesota.

And I believe it stirs the blood of every patriotic Minnesota who knows how we treat each other in this state. So that is what we are here to speak to today as health care professionals. I understand she was shot multiple times, too. That's the first time I'd heard that. I read it this morning that she was shot multiple times. She was hit twice. I think he pulled his trigger three times. Two of them hit her.

Hit her. But to deny, this is the mentality of this government. They blow up your boat. You're sinking and you're clinging in the middle of the high seas to debris from the boat. They're going to blow you up again. They shoot you because they think you're going to run over one of their agents. You're dying in the street. A doctor shows up.

They won't let the doctor tend to you. These people are animals. And it's a, you know, it's a breed that I know well. I was just handing a friend of mine the report that human rights watched and human rights first signed off on. No one remembers this. 124 people we murdered in the torture program. We even have a number of the official U.S. Army coroner's report, just like a civilian coroner, that puts on the report, reason of death, homicide.

And the circumstances are clear. Homicide caused by a special operator or by a CIA contractor or by a CIA agent. In one case in Afghanistan by an army sergeant. Murder. Watch this, Colonel. Chris, play the clip of this lady that was stopped. They kidnapped me. They took me.

They arrested and detained me for two days. I was put in county jail. Ice came. They came out of their cars. They asked me to see my ID. And while they were asking me to see the ID, that man he called me, he called me the N-word. They pushed me hard.

They used a lot of violence. My body still hurts. I got a concussion. It's really hard for me to speak because of that concussion. And I was screaming. I was crying. I was so scared. I've, like, never been arrested in my life.

I've never, I don't have, like, a criminal record. I have a clean record. I was literal cuffs to put on my legs, cuffs on my hands. I was actually detained with a Native American woman. And God bless her heart. She went through a lot too. She was also detained by ICE.

And she was also a U.S. citizen, like me. And she had gashes on her face. They shattered her windows. She had blood on her jeans, her corduro jeans. And she was crying because she was so scared that. Because she was with her dog. She was so scared that her dog got hurt. She was so scared for her life.

We were both crying together. We were holding each other tight. And I'll never forget the fear that we both felt in our hearts that day. Both of them born in the United States of America. Thank you, Justice Kavanaugh, for the infamous Kavanaugh stop. Oh, they ask you for your papers. It's no big deal. Who the hell carries papers in America?

We haven't done that in 250 years. George, how far? are we from that girl in Gaza who was in that car for hours hurt on a cell phone, called an ambulance. The ambulance approached. The Israelis blew the ambulance up. And ultimately, they wind up, as I recall, killing little girl too. How far are we now for that? Because that's where Israel is right now.

Wow. You know what? We've got to end on something a little. lighter. Chris, do you have George Galloway? Now, George made a great tape saying in our youth, we were taught the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming. Now the Americans are coming. And then he goes, this is enough to make a horse laugh. I think it's even more specific than that, Donald Trump is coming. Yes. Colonel, thank you for.

very much, my dear friend. Thanks for allowing me to go all over the place in these topics with you. I love it when you're passionate. You're a great man, Colonel. We appreciate your time. Thank you. Take care of it. Sure. Thank you. Coming up at 3 o'clock today to tie a bow on all of this, Professor John Mearsheimer. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.