Judging Freedom - COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : US Troops In Gaza?

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : US Troops In Gaza?See 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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I love our chit-chats before we go on air, and I almost wish we could air them because they're so warm and often so humorous. But nevertheless, everybody listening should know that I have such admiration, respect for you, and as my now notorious public kiss on your head demonstrated affection for you as well. Thank you for joining us, Colonel. I appreciate that. We'd probably go to jail if they were allowed to hear what was before the screen. Correct, correct. We do speak very candidly. Did you speak candidly with Secretary Colin Powell behind the scenes? I may have you did you had to absolutely one of the things he said to me on 28 january in 1989 in the pentagon and the e-ring and he was just trying to figure out where he was going just got his four

star is if you come to work for me you have to tell me the truth as you see it all the time and i thought well you know he's just a general telling me that well i found out that was absolutely the way he dealt with me wow well and sometimes you would throw me out the opposite But correct me if I'm wrong, one does not normally rise in the military by telling the unvarnished truth to one's superiors. Isn't that correct? That is absolutely correct. One learns to complicate things at best by fudging and, you know. I'm going to get to the military and what Pete Hegseth will do if President Trump orders U.S. troops on the ground in Gaza. But before we get there, your friend and colleague, Colonel Bill Astor, has written an unbelievable piece. Chris, we ought to post it. I'm sure the colonel wouldn't

mind. Right now, it's at anti-war.com arguing that the empire is failing and flailing. Do you agree, Colonel Wilkerson? Yes, I do. We have had conversations. to that effect. We just had a meeting of all the fellows. And one of the things I think there is consensus on is that it's a desperate situation for the empire. Desperate in many respects, both domestically and internationally. How is it desperate internationally? You can go wherever you want, Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, wherever you want to go. All across the map, if you will, all the way from the Arctic, where most Americans don't understand what we're doing. down through the Baltic Sea to Ukraine, where we have a vivid look at what's going on, but most Americans don't understand it, down to Armenia, Azerbaijan, through Georgia and the Caucasus, where we're still fomining enemies against Russia, and down to the ultimate southern tip with Iran,

and I think a war to be renewed and to be a disaster to end Israel and to come close to, if not ending, the empire, at least in its current configuration. The empire consists of, among other things, 750 military installations in 80 countries around the world. Colonel, is there a human being, a single human being who can name them all or justify them all? None. And guess what, Judge? I just found out from the expert in the United States on the base. nation, David Vine, and from my Italian friends around Verona, there we're building more.

Wow. Where are we building more? In Italy? They wanted me to come to Italy, and I couldn't because I'm going to Jeff Sachs event up at Columbia, but they wanted me to come over there and talk to the group in Verona and around Aviano and elsewhere. That's really angry because

Italy's not making any more land that we're going to build more bases in Italy. Do we have 100 bases in Italy? Oh, I don't think it's that many. If you counted the phone booths and things like that, you might get that many, but substantive. But here's the problem.

And this is what I was going to tell the Italians, what I've told them all along through two editors in Rome that I know. Listen, these aren't for NATO. They're only for NATO if you think NATO should fight China alongside the United States. These bases they're building now are like Ramstein. They have nothing to do with NATO and nothing to do with the defense of Europe

and everything to do with an offensive action against China. Wow. Colonel, how can President Trump claim he wants peace with Russia when yesterday he signed an executive order declaring and defining that the Russian Federation poses a substantial threat? It's hard to say this with a straight face. to the national security of the United States. What threat does Russia pose to the national security

of the United States? Well, indirectly, they do, of course, and the indirection is caused entirely by Donald Trump. Started with Joe Biden, I have to admit that, and that Trump is right, but it's being augmented and exacerbated by Donald Trump. We are becoming the reason Russia might be an existential threat to us because they have nuclear weapons and so do we. And Trump is walking down that road just as surely as anyone has since 1961, 62. Colonel, isn't the U.S. a threat to Russian national security? And before you answer, here's exhibit number one. Chris, cut 18. If you look at Klanigrad and it's, you know, you can argue back and forth, but it's a about 47 miles wide, surrounded by NATO on all sides.

There's absolutely no reason why that A2AD bubble to deter Russia, we cannot take that down from the ground in a timeframe that is unheard of and faster than we've ever been able to do. We've already planned that, we've already developed it. This is an American four-star general who commands more troops than any other four-star threatening to invade,

Russia on the ground. You tell me which country is the threat to the other. Obviously. First thing he needs to check is the flank on the north, which isn't bounded by NATO. It's bounded by the Baltic. And he needs to check also. He has about 100,000 men under him, as I understand it now, because he's commander of the U.S. Army in Europe. He's not the overall commander of the unified command in Europe. So he's about 100,000 troops. They'd be gone immediately. they'd be gone. That's not even enough to begin to fight. And if he's thinking about some kind of airborne combined operation on Kaliningrad, he's a fool, just like the fool he was when he was slightly less than rank and he was supervising the debacle that occurred as we negotiated our

way out of Afghanistan. He was in charge of that. And Judge, he's a perfect example of how the military now since about 9-11 has had absolutely no accountability for generals who failed. Dennis Lach, General Dennis Lach and I talk about this all the time. Quinn is a general officer for abject failure in three different theaters of war over the last 20 years going to be held accountable. None of them have. They're brought back and promoted. So he obviously got a fourth star either from President Biden, or President Trump. I can't imagine he got it from President Trump. I think it was from Biden.

All right. Trump has quite properly ranted and railed against that debacle of the U.S. departure from Afghanistan. Why should he be rewarded for that failure? A wonderful question. Am I revealing an ignorance of the way the military works? We went through all the General Dennis Lach and I and others at Eisenhower, went through all through all the generals in both Iraq from the invasion in 2003, in Afghanistan slightly before that, all the way up to the withdrawal from Iraq and the withdrawal from Afghanistan. We could not find a single general who shouldn't have been fired, including David Petraeus.

Wow. How can Putin sit down with Donald Trump in light? of what Professor Alexander Dugan has called, and doesn't take Professor Dugan to say this, it's rather obvious. Trump's becoming a neocon, funding a war against Russia, American intel on the ground in Ukraine, showing Ukraine military how to kill Russians. How can Putin negotiate with Trump while that's going on? Trump is killing Russians and Putin's going to talk to him? Well, we're going to see this come to a head, I'm quite sure,

because the three plus hours that Whitkoff spent discounting cancellation time and such. And I'm not sure that Putin didn't speak in English some of the time. But no matter what, Whitkoff got an earful. He got an airful that is the same message Putin and Sergey Lavrov have been delivering now for almost two years, the same parameters, the same. message. We will give you not one inch. You're the one who must surrender a few inches in order to get anything in Ukraine. And that's exactly what Putin's going to tell Trump to his face. So one wonders how he's going to spend that when he comes out of that. So two points

here, Colonel. I was just on the great game, which is a very popular and very serious Russian talk show with the, you know, the host, Dmitri Symes, this. senior he used to be a professor at uh johnson hopkins um goes all the way back to the nixon institute if i just go back to the nix administration a brilliant a sophisticated guy can't come to the united states anymore in the biden administration indicted him for some nonsense and seized his farm not far from where you live it's another story for another time anyway he told me that after, this is what the Russian press is saying, after Trump and Putin agreed to talk, after the Kremlin leaked it and then the White House leaked it, the White House added another

condition, and that is that President Zelensky be physically present. But they were laughing at that because I can't imagine Putin being in the same room with Zelensky, can you? I can, but only under a very tight set of circumstances, and I don't think Trump will allow that tight set of circumstances, but maybe Putin's got something up his sleeve, or maybe even Zelensky's got something up his sleeve that we're not, we're going to be surprised by. I doubt it, but, and I'll have to say I doubt this will come out, come off, that the triumvirate, as it were, will be together in the same room. It could happen, but I doubt it. The other thing I wanted to mention to you that Scott Ritter told us yesterday is that Sergey Lavrov, my friend, has reduced to two the six conditions that the Russians have insisted upon to stop the special military operation. And they are that Ukraine vacate, meaning militarily and administratively, the four Donbusses and recognize that they are Russia, and that Ukraine commit never to engage with NATO. Now, those are basically the two things he's been demanding from the beginning.

There were some others, but they've combined them. Well, he was throwing a few things out there that he would have to trade, but those are the two inescapables. Correct. Now, I can't imagine that Zelensky could agree to that because if he does, he probably won't make it back from wherever this negotiation is going to occur to Kiev in one piece. And I don't know that Trump can agree to that. Lindsay Graham, Tom Cotton, all those folks that whisper. neocon nonsense into his ear are going to explode. Tell me your thoughts on whether or not it is realistic to expect that Donald Trump and Volodomir Zelensky will agree to those two Putin demands. The only way I can see it happening is if Trump suddenly and uncharacteristically reverts to his stance pre-presidency and immediately after the inauguration, where he has.

he is absolutely intent on stopping the killing, as he keeps saying, and getting the peace prize or whatever. And Trump brings the hammer down in front of Putin, if we do have this trilateral meeting on Zelensky, and both men agree that if Zelensky doesn't agree to what they've just agreed to, they'll kill him. I mean, it's that simple. Wow. That's the only way I could see that resolution. As you understand it, Colonel, and from your knowledge and your sources, is Zelensky still the puppet of ardent nationalists? The Russians call them Nazis, but these ardent, ardent, ardent Ukraine nationalists. Is he still their puppet? Within Ukraine, I think that's true. But I think the bigger entity of which he's the puppet

is Washington NATO. And I think he knows that. But he's comfortable with that, because it's been very rewarding for him. But Washington and NATO and American neocons, Lindsay Graham and Tom Cotton, et cetera, would never go along with the two conditions boiled down from the original six that are non-negotiable from the perspective of the Russians. Am I right? They would if they thought it were existential or near-existential for both NATO and the United States, which it is.

So your point is well taken, and I think my point says to the American people, your listeners and others, if this comes out with no resolution, look at John Mearsheimer's solution. We either have a stasis, a bloody, bloody stasis in which Zelensky will be assassinated eventually and will have chaos in what remains of Ukraine, and maybe the potential for NATO joining the fight with some crazy Europeans starting it, or even us, like Donovan, or we will have a world war that blooms really more rapidly than I predict it will bloom. Wow. I was on with the, I'm sure you know him, you don't know why I'm chatting, chuckling in him, the great

George Galloway yesterday, and Galloway was condemning a prime minister, Netanyahu's threat. It's now no longer a threat. It's now their policy to occupy Gaza. And Galloway said to me, what will the Americans do if Netanyahu wants American boots on the ground in Gaza? He will need that eventually, and eventually might not be very short, very long time. Well, because the IDFs falling apart. If Trump ordered boots on the ground in Gaza, not to feed the Palestinians, but to kill them. What should Secretary Hegseth do? Well, he won't do anything, I don't think,

except go along with it, but I think the American soldiers will, and Marines and whomever goes in there. I think they will do something about it because they will refuse to do what Tony Aguilar has reported so vividly others are doing in Gaza. They will not do that.

So there'll be a real impasse there. You will not be able to continue to carry out Netanyahu's wishes. At the same time, you will be, at least in part, relieving the IDF because it is about to fall apart, Judge. I mean fall apart, literally on the ground in front of Beebe's eyes. It's about to fall apart. They will give them some relief, and they can maybe back up and look at their other fronts, which are becoming in peril, too, from Syria to Iran to Lebanon. So it could be, a relief valve for BB that'll allow him to survive a little bit longer. And it might stop the killing in mass that's going on now. Judge, at these humanitarian points, they're killing 150 to 200

today. There were 400 places for the Palestinians to get food. There are now, according to Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate, either three or four, from 400. And they're using main tank guns. They're using main tank guns on them now. Don't waste 5-5-6 ammo. Just shoot a tank gun. Shoot a McCauvin 905 millimeter in there, whatever. Blow about 40 of them up at one time. This is unconscionable. It's been unconscionable for a long time. What would you, forgive me for asking you this, I'm tempted. I can't resist the temptation. What would you, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, do if you commanded troops that they were told to go on the ground in Gaza and kill Palestinians? I do what Tony did or tried to do. He was a single individual. He had no power to do it. I'd turn around and say, back off or I'll

kill you. Now, here's something that's happening right now. I don't for a moment think we'll finally do what we should have done a long time ago, not just with Gaza, but with the Balkans and elsewhere. There is a thing called chapter six in chapter seven in the UN charter. We rarely, we do the peacekeeping missions a lot. We rarely do the peace enforcement. missions. We tried in the Balkans and it failed because we had no leaders in France and other countries that had the courage to put the rules of engagement in place to make it a peace enforcement mission. Have the UN General Assembly call a special session. It only takes a two-thirds vote and the Security Council cannot override it. Two-thirds vote, you could, the problem in putting

together the competent forces to go in there and essentially say, we're here on a chapter seven mission under the UN charter to enforce the peace and we will shoot you don't get out of our way wow i would love to see that happen colonel i have to run i could continue this conversation all afternoon i love it when the your blood pressure goes up i don't love it for medical reasons i love it for histrionic reasons kiss my head and take the pressure on next time we're together in front of everybody i'll kiss your head again because i love you colonel laurence wilkerson thank you very much for joining us thank you okay and uh coming up later today at three o'clock this afternoon an interesting mini lecture on the origins of the israeli state by who else professor john meersheimer

and then at four o'clock when is world war three coming colonel douglas mcgregor judging the Palatown for judging freedom. Thank you.